Of SIR JOHN BLAQUIERE, K. B., P. C., M. P., &c. &c. &c., a history might be written for the use and instruction of present and future court-sycophants, state-jobbers, and drawingroom dependants. He first gained a footing in Ireland under the Earl of Harcourt, when Lord Lieutenant. Although descended from an ancient and honourable foreign stock, he did not, it is said, possess an acre in any part of the globe; but his own industry soon procured him that which fortune had denied.

During his connexion, as Secretary of State, with the administration of Lord Harcourt, corruption was reduced to such a regular system, that "those who ran might read." The terms of the entrée, from the highest to the meanest office in the castle, custom-house, or other public department, were never a matter of mystery. Sir John prided himself on the merit of having seduced more sturdy patriots into the base subserviency of court-dependants, during his public life, than any secretary of modern times, Castlereagh not excepted. On his descent from the secretorial chair, Sir John took the good city of Dublin under his paternal care.

Having obtained the notorious "paving and lighting_act,” a deed of darkness, he procured himself to be nominated perpetual chief commissioner under the bill; the pickings of which office were rather underrated at five thousand pounds per annum. To this were to be added other places and pensions of the value of three more: yet he was ever a needy man, a constant borrower, and a tardy payer. In order to establish a local habitation and a name, he purchased an estate in the county of Westmeath, called Port Lemon, leaving it with an eternal mill-stone round its neck, in the shape of mortgage.

It would seem like an attempt to draw on the credulity of my readers to describe some of the little jobs which Sir John, as Knight of the Bath, M. P. and Privy Counsellor, did not disdain to turn his hand to.

The visits of an upholsterer, who had long lived on the pleasures of hope, became rather troublesome. Sir John cast about him for a job to serve this worthy man; nor was his ingenuity long at a loss to discover one. The acute Right Honourable suddenly discovered that a great public convenience would arise from having the "furlongs from the castle" to all parts of the city, and in every direction covering an extent of many miles, ascertained, and posted for public information. Many persons pretended to see the great advantages that would arise from such a classification of distance, yet not one of them could for the life of him describe what these advantages were; although the Dublin Journal (then the organ of the Orange corporation and paving-board junta) puffed it off. The hackney-coach and chair fares had been long before regulated, and

a set-down any where within the circular road (the Boulevards of Dublin) was known to be one shilling, the distance possibly being upwards of a mile; why, therefore, when there were no fares under a shilling, the fractional furlongs should have been deemed of such importance was a secret which no person could unravel, until it was known to have been undertaken on the suggestion of Sir John; and then every citizen, from the humblest cobbler in his bulk to the army contractor in his buggy, knew the why and the wherefore of the job. The favoured upholsterer was selected, as the man of all others who took up Sir John's idea the most clearly, as to the nature of the intended work; the grant was obtained, and in a few months handsome broad tablets were stuck up to the amount of, probably, several hundreds, in the various streets and suburbs of the metropolis, giving the pedestrian the important intelligence (in which he might rejoice or deplore, according to circumstances) that he was just then one, two, three, or

It is not to be supposed that Sir John's private cabinet derived any addition through the gratitude of the contractor.

His next job was one certainly very necessary for a privy counsellor to suggest and superintend; but as his efforts in this laudable scheme were declared to be "pro bono publico," I shall not intrude on the secrets of the cabinet, but borrowing its own motto or inscription, “SHUT THE DOOR on it. For Sir John's adhesion to Castlereagh in the memorable Union question, the peerage of Ireland was adorned with his foreign

name.

After all his speculations, he died in very straitened circumstances, leaving Port Lemon still heavily encumbered, and the amiable Baroness an annuitant on the proceeds of one of his patent offices, a sinecure of a thousand a year, now held by one of his sons. His lordship took leave of this world in 1812,

There were, at this period, in Dublin, an attorney of the name of Furlong, who, on the strength of no common stock of assurance, and PROTESTANT loyalty, made himself a kind of "fetch and carry" of the news of the day between the Castle-yard and the hall of the courts: his assumption of the earliest and most important news, generally picked up as an eaves-dropper in the Castle-yard, and the impudent pomposity with which he prefaced his intelligence, gained him the nick-name of One FURLONG from the Castle."

and was succeeded in his title and estate (?) by his eldest son, the present baron, who lives a retired and inglorious life at Port Lemon, with a numerous family; although the peerage (of course an omission) does not state that the peer ever married His second son, a lieutenant-general in the army, an officer of undistinguished military fame, lately made an appeal to the sympathy of the public through the journals of the day, on his domestic infelicity. His third son, a highly-gifted and gallant officer, who had served with great distinction on the continent and in the peninsular campaigns, became entangled several years ago in a crim. con. cause, (Leigh v. Blaquiere,) which drove him from his profession when arrived at the rank of ma jor and assistant quartermaster-general,

"And all the future voyage of his life

Was bound in shallows and in misery!"

He died in London, April, 1827, beloved and pitied.

Lord de Blaquiere had a brother, or one so called, a Colonel Blaquiere, who was one of the most extraordinary characters both in habits and personal appearance of the age he lived in. He probably was the elder of the two; although his climateworn visage rendered it impossible to fix his age at any precise number of years, from sixty to ninety. He must, however, in his earlier days have possessed a fine face and person, for, in 1800, when I saw him and heard it mentioned, he was then above eighty years old, his carriage was firm and erect, his dark sunken eye full of fire; and his arm, under which he generally embraced a short but heavy black thorn club, was the terror of all encroching coal-porters or intrusive hod-men.

His constant dress was an old blue demi-regimental-cut coat, the lappels of which came as low as his hips;. the skirts were broad, short, and hooked back, displaying a lining of faded scarlet shaloon, evidently a "tale (tail) of other times;" scarlet waistcoat, edged with lace, guiltless in its latter days of any outward display of the precious metals; breeches of black velvet, brass buttons, and knee-bands, once of lace; white woollen stockings, with short canvass gaiters, highly blacked and varnished, (such as were common in the days of Wolfe,) gave effect to his well-shaped leg; while shoes of substantial thickness completed his lower outfit.

On the very apex of an extraordinary shaped head, was a a fierce-looking black bob-tailed wig, which ensconced half the forehead at the expense of much of the poll, surmounted by a hat which defies description. It had been originally tri-cocked, and of the Cumberland cut, which had this peculiar advantage, that, thrown on the head ever so carelessly, it always present

ed a cock in front. Old age, wear and tear, and the politeness of the veteran, had almost obliterated its triangular formation, and but for the cockade, which dangled over the left eye of the wearer, and which " gave the world assurance that it was once a hat, it might have passed for a cap, or bonnet of the age of the Tudors.

Firm as flint, he braved all weathers in this thread-bare costume; although, more provident than his brother, he had scraped together, it was said, a few thousands, the savings of some jobs in the way of forage contracts for the army, which his right honourable relative had procured for, and probably snacked with him. The old soldier was strictly honourable in all his pecuniary transactions, and proudly boasted that he owed no man a shilling!

His domestic menage was as extraordinary as all his other arrangements. Truly oriental in his habit, he enjoyed his plurality of wives; and, what is more astonishing, compelled them all to reside under the same roof. When any difference or squabbles arose on the score of priority of favour, he applied the powers of his black thorn talisman, which abroad was his defence, at home his baton of command; and it seldom failed to restore, if not peace, at least silence.

Coming home one evening to his suburban cabin on the Drumcondra road, he reached the door when the full tide of war between his trio of wives had reached its height. Waiting for a moment's pause in the storm, (for he was a good tactician,) he took advantage of it to salute the door of his humble domicile with one whack of his talisman, which instantly put to flight all other thoughts but those of individual safety in the astounded inmates. The question now was, who would venture to open the door? An awful pause ensued, but a second knock, louder than the first, decided the matter, and all rushed to the door, which opened to receive their lord and

master.

"How now, ye hags?" said the Colonel, "always squabbling -always fighting! D-n you, can't you agree?—there are but three of you!"

He cared so little about any man's opinion of his mode of life, that he never made a secret of it: of his neighbours, who where a poor and lowly race of cottagers, some looked upon him as mad; and others as being "sould to the devil, and careless what he said or did in this life!" a charitable conclusion, which the lower orders of the Irish are extremely prone to come to in regard to such characters. The Colonel had as many sons as king Priam, some of whom have distinguished themselves as soldiers; and some wielding the sword and the pen with equal grace and honour. The eccentric translator of

"Schiller's thirty years' war was said to be his eldest born. I remember seeing him in 1797, a captain R. I. A., an erratic comet in our world of little stars; a giant amongst us pigmies, but, unfortunately, an ultra-devotee to Bacchanalian joys.

冬品

CHAPTER XII.

"The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral comical, historical pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited."

THE seducing and dangerous effects of "days of ease and nights of pleasure," were never more fully exemplified than in the state of unhappy Ireland at this period. While the court was a scene of every species of thoughtless dissipation, turbulence, rapine, and midnight murder raged throughout the country. That spirit of insurrection, which under various names had pervaded the lower classes of all the provinces from time immemorial, at this period revived in some of the counties under the name of Defenderism. The title of Defender was now substituted for "White-boy,' ," "Heart of Steel," "Peep o'day Boy," &c. So inefficient had been the means employed for the suppression of this widely-spread banditti, that their depredations at last approached the capital, and the adjoining counties of Wicklow, Meath, and Kildare, were night after night the scene of some shocking outrage. Wretches were hung up by dozens, but still the evil was not subdued. In the midst of these horrors the wheel of fashion whirled on in its giddy round: the great emporium of pleasure and intrigue was the private theatre, Fishamble Street. From some offence taken by the leaders of the ton at the conduct of Daly, the patentee of the Dublin theatre, they determined to establish one of their own; and certainly if such an innovation of the rights of an individual, and of a profession dependent on public favour for their daily bread, could be defended or palliated, the splendid manner in which their object was carried into effect would throw a veil over its injustice, and, indeed, cruelty. This theatre, about as large as the Lyceum, had originally been called the Music Hall, where concerts and oratories had been periodically given in former days, but which fell into decay in consequence of a melancholy occurrence some years previously, when, on the occasion of a public meeting to